Access to NHS Dentistry

Siobhan Baillie Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing the debate. I enjoyed the spirited contribution by the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd)—particularly the characteristic political attacks. That highlights part of the problem that we are dealing with here. If we are unable to recognise the failures by a number of different Governments across a number of decades, we will never get solutions. Equally, if we continue constantly treating the NHS or anything about it as a political football, we will paralyse this country and things will not get done.

I know that the Labour party likes to blame everything on the Government, but today’s debate has been really useful for hearing all the different elements of what is going wrong for NHS dentistry, including the part that the NHS itself can play in handling HR, looking after staff and retention. I think that is important.

This is a critical, crucial health issue for my constituents in Stroud, as it is for other Members’ constituents. We have a number of different points of casework related to this issue, and we get emails about it all the time. Anybody who has had toothache knows that it is debilitating: we cannot get on with our day, we start off grumpy, and we end up not speaking—my husband likes that bit. Anybody who has seen a child with decaying teeth starts to worry about what is going on at home, and about the health and future of that child. They are right to do so, because once those teeth are decaying, it is very difficult to repair them.

I thank all of Stroud’s dentists: like other Members, I had so many dentists contact me during covid to offer help. They were some of the first people to be frustrated by the restrictions placed on them, but also the first to offer help. In Gloucestershire, the CCG has seen a drop of 17 NHS dentists between 2019-20 and 2020-21. That is a drop of 5% in one year, so it is a very worrying development, as colleagues have said. We believe that it is also likely to under-represent the real fall in capacity, because most dentists tend to reduce their NHS contracts before leaving the service, and only 33% of adults in Gloucestershire saw an NHS dentist in the two years to June 2021.

To provide some colour and some real-life experience, one of my constituents moved to Stroud in January 2020. She fell pregnant and was entitled to free dental care, but by the time she had obtained her MAT B1 certificate, she was unable to find a dentist. She could not find a dentist throughout her pregnancy, when she would have had that free dental care, and still has not found one. She spoke to 15 dentists in the local area—Stroud, Wotton, Stonehouse and Gloucester—all of whom told her that they were not accepting new NHS patients. One interesting and worrying point that she raised with me is that all of the dentists’ surgeries she spoke to that were accepting children as NHS patients—her little one is about one year old now—were doing so only if their parents joined them on a private basis. She and her husband have found themselves having to join on a private basis and pay the fees to make sure that her little one has NHS cover. So many parents would not have that option, but I do not think it should be my constituent’s only option for getting support for her child.

There are three key areas I would like the Minister to cover, and I have no doubt that she will do so. Norfolk desperately wants a training centre, just in case she has not got that point. First, what is the explanation for the delays in creating the improved new contracts for NHS dentists? We are spending £3 billion: why are we still in a situation where the actual terms of the contract—the piece of paper—are preventing people from getting into this worthy, skilled and amazing profession?

Secondly, what is the plan to address the recruitment issues? We have heard that almost 1,000 dentists quit the NHS last year; we have heard about the people going back to European countries; and we have heard that people are not coming from further afield abroad. Can existing resources be used to improve recruitment and retention? The Minister has responded to me very clearly: we have similar problems with midwifery services. We have lots of recruitment and retention issues in the NHS, so there are similarities; what can we do?

Thirdly, how are the Government using the post-pandemic period to reimagine NHS dentistry in both areas, the preventive action and the responsive package? With preventive action, we are hoping to bring in family hubs around the country that children can access from birth. Can those hubs be used to improve children’s and families’ awareness of healthcare and dental health? Also, turning to the responsive package, the points about data collection really worry me. As we have heard from a number of colleagues, we are never going to improve services if our CCGs around the country do not have the information they need.

Finally, I want everybody to think about the pain of toothache. It is absolutely awful to go through, and our constituents are really worried about this. I think we can make changes: I do not think that this is just a money issue, and given that there is so much cross-party support to make a change, I hope that we can do so.